DUGi

Avaluació de la ultrafiltració com a operació unitària prèvia a la filtració per carbó activat en la potabilització a l’ETAP de Montfullà

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The activated carbon filter has a very high adsorption capacity, which makes it very useful in a drinking water treatment plant as it is able to remove organoleptic parameters, heavy metals dissolved in water, and even dissolved organic matter. The main limitation is the high cost of regenerating the carbon when it has lost its adsorption capacity. For this reason, we wanted to try to introduce ultrafiltration as a treatment stage prior to activated carbon filtration, in order to observe whether the water would arrive with better quality and thus be able to extend the useful life of the activated carbon. In order to test ultrafiltration, membrane filter modules were built and functional tests were carried out in order to carry out the experiments on water from the treatment train at the Montfullà DWTP. To carry out these experiments, water was sampled at different points of the Montfullà DWTP, characterising the water before and after ultrafiltration to see the evolution of the water quality. In some tests, the water leaving the sand filter at the Montfullà DWTP was also characterised in order to compare which of the two filters is more effective in eliminating certain chemical parameters associated with drinking water. After the tests, it was observed that ultrafiltration has a high capacity to reduce suspended matter, as very high reductions were achieved. On the other hand, unsatisfactory results were obtained for dissolved organic matter, fluorescent organic compounds and trihalomethane formation potential, as no reduction of these parameters was observed in most of the tests. However, these trials served to carry out a correlation study and to see that of the dissolved organic matter, humic and fulvic acids could be the main precursors for the formation of trihalomethanes. As a conclusion of the study, some hypotheses have been drawn, such as the following: - Membrane filters require pre-treatment before use. - The module stabilises over time, as it becomes dirty, the pores of the membrane become smaller and the filtration becomes more efficient

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